"I Came Across a Junk": Understanding Design Flaws of Data Visualization from the Public's Perspective

TL;DR

This paper investigates visualization design flaws from the public's perspective, develops a systematic framework to categorize these flaws, and explores underlying reasons for their occurrence, addressing gaps in prior research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework for understanding visualization flaws from users' perspectives and analyzes why these flaws happen, filling existing research gaps.

Findings

Identified common visualization design flaws from the public's view

Developed a systematic framework to categorize visualization flaws

Explored reasons behind the occurrence of these flaws

Abstract

The visualization community has a rich history of reflecting upon flaws of visualization design, and research in this direction has remained lively until now. However, three main gaps still exist. First, most existing work characterizes design flaws from the perspective of researchers rather than the perspective of general users. Second, little work has been done to infer why these design flaws occur. Third, due to problems such as unclear terminology and ambiguous research scope, a better framework that systematically outlines various design flaws and helps distinguish different types of flaws is desired. To address the above gaps, this work investigated visualization design flaws through the lens of the public, constructed a framework to summarize and categorize the identified flaws, and explored why these flaws occur.